For the past 10 years, Rob Andersen has been a regular attendee at DEF CON in Las Vegas, one of the world's largest annual gatherings of informational security professionals. So when he moved to Louisiana two years ago and discovered a nascent community of hackers, makers, and computer security experts, he thought: Why not create a version of DEF CON in New Orleans?

"DEF CON is 22-years-old and attracts over 20,000 people a year," Andersen, a New Orleans-based information security specialist for NASA who telecommutes to Washington, D.C., said in a phone interview. "But smaller information security conferences happen in cities like St. Louis and Louisville. It made sense that New Orleans should have one of its own."

NolaCon, as the conference is called, will take place at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel from June 19 to 22 and feature more than two dozen speakers on subjects ranging from online privacy to cryptography to malware analysis. Taking a page from the city's first Maker Faire earlier this year, the conference also will offer workshops on computer forensics, social engineering and even lock-picking.

"Corporations tend to hire information security experts to break into their security system and expose its weaknesses," Andersen said. "But part of the job can involve literally breaking into their building."

A similar one-day information security conference, BSidesNola, took place May 25 at the Hilton. That event sprang out of the local IT security group NolaSec, whose members gather each month to discuss new research in the IT security field. Speakers included representatives from Google, HP and Ernst & Young.

But Andersen said NolaCon is more ambitious in scope. The first two days will provide training courses in hardware hacking and "penetration testing" -- the process of attacking a clients' IT system to detect security holes. The second half of the conference is packed full of speakers like Evan Booth, the creator of Terminal Cornucopia, a year-long project in which Booth built improvised weapons out of materials he found in airports beyond the security checkpoint.

"His point was that airport security creates only an illusion of safety," Andersen said. "His larger point is that a lot of security problems today require unorthodox thinking."

Andersen said he was inspired to create NolaCon to serve the city's growing tech sector. Last year, for example, GE Capital introduced an apprenticeship program at the University of New Orleans and hired 150 people for its local technology office. Recent graduates of UNO have made strides in the field of computer forensics, Anderson said.

"When eBay got hacked a few months ago, they hired computer forensics experts to figure out how the hackers did it," he said.